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The Lion's Roar Chapter 6
The Treatise on the Five Teachings, Sixth Chapter divides into five schools, the first of which is the teaching of the Śrāvakas, likened to the “lion” – the Dharma of dependent origination, arising and ceasing in every instant, impermanence, and non-self. The Sarvāstivāda school (of the Sthavira tradition) upholds the doctrine of “all exists” throughout past, present, and future, which is a form of realism or panrealism. This view praises impermanence, dependent origination, and non-self, but still affirms “existence,” whereas the Mahayana, through the Prajñāpāramitā teachings, emphasizes that all dharmas are not only dependently arisen, impermanent, and without self, but are truly “empty” of self-nature, transcending the duality of “existence – non-existence.” In the Mahayana’s common vision, the two characteristics of dependent origination and provisional existence harmoniously coexist, thoroughly empty yet unobstructed, called the threefold contemplation.
In the history of Buddhism, there was also the Pudgalavāda school (the Personalist School, formerly Vatsiputriya, later Sammitiya), which upheld the existence of a “person” – an entity neither identical with nor separate from the five aggregates (form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness); using the “Burden” Sūtra (Saṃyukta Āgama 3/73) as evidence that there must be a “person” to carry the burden, thus there is suffering and the possibility of letting go for liberation. In Master Xuanzang’s time, there were about 260,000 monastics, of whom about 66,000 belonged to the Personalist School, showing that this view was once very prevalent as a response to the sharp but rigid stance of the Sthavira tradition.